


lipstick and stars

by psychicbees



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Fluff, copious amounts of coffee
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-04
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-05-31 06:09:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6458926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psychicbees/pseuds/psychicbees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You were seventeen, all tight braids and red-red lipstick, when you met Sam Winchester. You lusted instead of loved, broke hearts instead of mending them, and tended to leave a trail of bodies in your wake. </p><p>Sammy changed all of that.</p><p>When he stumbled into your small-town high school from a glorious black Impala, your entire life turned for the better. He quickly became your best friend, your other half, staying up until three a.m. with you talking about the sun and the stars and nothing at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. chapter one

You were seventeen, all tight braids and red-red lipstick, when you met Sam Winchester. You lusted instead of loved, broke hearts instead of mending them, and tended to leave a trail of bodies in your wake. 

Sammy changed all of that.

When he stumbled into your small-town high school from a glorious black Impala, your entire life turned for the better. He quickly became your best friend, your other half, staying up until three a.m. with you talking about the sun and the stars and nothing at all.

The night before he left, he told you that his dad wasn't really a mechanic and there was a reason why you'd never been to his house. He told you all about wendigos at age twelve and vamps at age eight. He said, with deadly sincerity, that his mother had burned on the ceiling of his nursery on the night of his six-month birthday.

When all had been said and you stared at him with tears in your eyes, he leaned in and kissed you under the glow-in-the-dark stars on your ceiling. You were the one who finally pulled away.

He had smiled at you, sadly, and climbed out of your bedroom window, like he did every night that he came over. You leaned back onto your bed and stared at the ceiling until you heard the rumble of his car pulling away. You felt like a little bit of your soul flew away with him on those chrome-plated wheels.

The next semester-and-a-half went by in a blur, until you were finally able to shake off the small-town shackles. You moved to the city and got your degree in mythology. Now you lived in a minuscule apartment crammed with textbooks and takeout containers, and a box of lipstick and stars stowed away in the farthest corner of the highest shelf.

You were twenty-five now, working in a coffee shop. You had been sleep-deprived for so long that you had slipped into a semipermanent state of complete and utter exhaustion, wanting to close your eyes for just a second but the knowledge that your shift ended in ten-nine-eight minutes kept you awake. When your replacement finally breezed through the back door with a mumbled apology, you finished pouring the customer's soy-vanilla-triple-whip-whatever and got out of that cursed building as soon as you could.

You really didn't mind your job, it was easy and paid reasonably well. Just not today, because it had been eight years since your best friend drove away in the middle of the night and left you with only a broken heart and the taste of Sam Winchester on your lips.


	2. chapter two

It had been snowing intermittently all day, big fluffy flakes spiraling down out of a cotton-ball sky.

On your walk home, bundled against the driving wind, your eyes, usually set firmly on the grubby sidewalk, caught a glint of light and flicked up to the street. The afternoon sun, drifting through the sparse cloud cover, had caught on a pair of chrome-plated wheels, which were attached to a sleek black Chevrolet. The purr of the engine instantly took you back, to too-humid nights where the leather of bench seats stuck to your legs and the glow of the headlights was the only illumination besides the stars.

Almost too late now, you turned your head to stare at the receding vehicle, glimpsing only a Kansas license plate and the reflection of hazel eyes in the passenger-side rearview window.

No. It wasn't him. _It couldn't be him_. Sam Winchester had driven out of your life eight years ago, and he was never coming back.

Then, you had wished he'd come back, to talk to him again, to say I love you _oh God I love you_.

Now, the bitter taste in your mouth pushed the car away. You wanted him to leave, but a tiny portion of your heart screamed come back, Sammy. Please.

You turned away and completed the rest of your walk with tears tracing rivers down your cheeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is so short and terrible im screeching


	3. chapter three

Sam flopped back into his seat, one trembling hand reaching up to cover his mouth. Dean looked over, brow furrowing into a look of practiced confusion. "What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost."

The irony of the moment made Sam want to smirk, but his brain felt like it had shorted out and was just spewing a steady stream of _ohmygod_. "It's her. It's her. Oh my God."

"Who? Who did you see?"

"Y/N." Sam said weakly, scrubbing at his eyes with the heel of one hand like he had hallucinated and wanted to wash the image out of his mind.

The look on his brother's face went through several emotions in a few seconds (confusion, remembrance, anxiety) before settling on surprise. "Y/N? Seriously? Are you sure? It's been years, Sammy, she might have changed or moved somewhere else are you really sure--"

"Yes I'm sure!" Sam snapped. Dean's jaw hardened and he turned away, recognizing that Sam had reached his breaking point, but heard his brother mutter "I'd recognize her anywhere."

\-----

You were late to work the next day. You had a good reason, of course (drinking yourself into oblivion). Luckily, the woman who worked the shift before you- a kind, aging woman named Ellen- was nice enough to stay for a while after you got there, handing you two aspirin, a black coffee, and a sympathetic look.

You thanked her, downing the aspirin with a swig of the bitter liquid and tying on your apron. With a grimace on your face, you swung around to the counter, resigning yourself to push through the pain in your temples for at least a little while, until your meds kicked in and you could think straight again.

It was the afternoon dull period, the awkward time between one and three p.m. where it was too late for lunch and too early for dinner, and when the only customers you usually had were high schoolers looking for an after-school caffeine fix, and truckers, who kept a schedule of their own and loaded up on greasy food and coffee at any time of the day.

You loved working this shift. Everyone who came in was complacent and allowed you to take your time, and it allowed you to sleep in in the mornings. There was only one customer in the shop, one of your regulars- a teenage girl who came in on Tuesday afternoons and sat in one of the corner booths, sipping green tea and working on schoolwork. 

The door creaked open, letting in a gust of wintry air. You idly looked up from where you were unnecessarily cleaning the counter, hoping it was a regular so you could distract yourself in some mindless conversation for at least a few seconds. 

Unfortunately, it wasn't a regular. "It" was a guy who you'd never seen before, who wore the ease of a frequent traveler like a second skin. His green eyes belied his lax appearance, however. They scanned the café thoroughly, taking in the windows, any possible exits, and the occupants of the room, before settling on you. 

A smile slipped onto his tanned face like water, never reaching his eyes, and chirped out a "Hi!"

He took a moment to study the menu on a chalkboard above your head, and you took that moment to study him a little more closely. He was muscular, had the grace of an athlete, and from what you could see of his body, got hurt a lot. There were scars running up and down his arms, and his nose had the distinctive crook of being broken but not set correctly. 

Something about him reminded you of someone you used to know, some characteristic stored deep in your subconscious that fluttered at the back of your mind. 

His voice broke through your reverie. "Can I get the strongest coffee you've got- make that two-" you eyed him suspiciously, not wanting to give a complete stranger a caffeine overdose. "My brother's in the car, going on and on about some chick he saw, and I thought, well, maybe some coffee will calm him down- he's weird like that- sorry, I'm rambling, it's been a tough day-"

You shut him up with a stern look. "Sit down and have some coffee. And go, bring your brother in with you. If there's anything I know about this kind of thing, it's that he needs some food in him."

He closed his mouth with an audible clop and turned smartly on his heel. 

You sighed and shook your head, turning away to make the coffees. You heard the door open again and assumed that it was the stranger again, this time with his brother in tow. Without turning, you called out "I'll have y'alls coffees in a minute, just sit down at the counter here."

With a practiced smile, you set two tall paper cups on the counter and glanced up at the brother of Mr. Mysterious Traveler.

 _Whoa_. Okay, back the fuck up. First of all, how was someone allowed to look like that, and look at you like...that?

He was unabashedly staring at you with a strange expression that made you feel decidedly uncomfortable. It seemed like he was trying to remember your face, pull it out from somewhere deep in the depths of those hazel eyes and--

Wait. Those eyes- you'd seen them before- but not in a very long time- (eight years and one day, to be exact)

The world suddenly fell out from under your feet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this took so long to write omf. but almost 1000 words! woop woop!
> 
> this is horribly un-betaed, so hit me up on tumblr @beliona if you have questions/comments/concerns!

**Author's Note:**

> *throws self into the sun*
> 
> This work is un-betaed, so I'd appreciate any comments on errors or anything. Find me on the tumblr as psychicbees.


End file.
